Sysinternals : An extensive collection of powerful windows utilities
Sysinternals provides many small windows utilities that are quite useful for low-level windows hacking. Some are free of cost and/or include source code, while others are proprietary. Survey respondents were most enamored with:
- ProcessExplorer for keeping an eye on the files and directories open by any process (like LSoF on UNIX).
- PsTools for managing (executing, suspending, killing, detailing) local and remote processes.
- Autoruns for discovering what executables are set to run during system boot up or login.
- RootkitRevealer for detecting registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit.
- TCPView, for viewing TCP and UDP traffic endpoints used by each process (like Netstat on UNIX).
Update: Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July 2006, promising that “Customers will be able to continue building on Sysinternals’ advanced utilities, technical information and source code”. Less than four months later, Microsoft removed most of that source code. Future product direction is uncertain.